This book sets forth in a clear and always interesting way the intricate details of the search by a religious group for a place where harmonious and lasting adjustment of its members to each other and to the earth’s physical landscape can be made. Beginning in the sixteenth century, persecution drove the Mennonites from western to eastern Europe and from there in the eighteenth century to Russia. In Russia they remained under the official guardianship of Germany until this protection ceased in 1870. A few years later, owing to interference with their way of life by Russian authorities, some 7,000 Mennonites fled to the New World and settled eight townships set aside for them near Winnepeg, Canada. By the 1890s, Mennonites began expanding westward along crown and railroad tracts. However, the flourishing Canadian experiment ran aground about the time of World War I because of the Mennonites’ insistence on non-participation in public schooling, their pacifism, and their German cultural orientation. During the 1920s mass migration once again took place to Mexico and Paraguay.
The Mexican settlements, which this book investigates, were mostly located on the high western flanks of the Sierra Madre Occidental in basin and range country, and have grown to a population of some 30,000. Here they have flourished, thanks to the governmental Privilegium granting religious, educational, and economic freedom, and exemption from military service. Nevertheless problems have developed because of water scarcity, the appearance of Mexican squatters, and criticism of the Mennonites because of the similarity of their large holdings to the latifundium system.
Notwithstanding these problems, the primary obstacle to continued settlement success has been a growing shortage of land. Competition with ejido settlers has become acute and has produced restlessness among the Mennonites, causing a new wave of emigration during the 1950s to British Honduras. Settlement in the latter area is discussed in a 36-page appendix to the book.
The author feels that the Mennonites have largely shown themselves incapable of adopting the environmental adjustments needed in difficult areas. Because of this, he argues the Mennonites have begun to drop behind Mexican farmers who have had modern governmental assistance, so that the roles of the two groups have been reversed since the early years of settlement. The primary goal of the Mennonites, preservation of their linguistic, cultural, and ethnic characteristics, has caused them to reject close association with their host society and has brought about a gradual decline in opportunities. Although there is great facility for individual Mennonites to move from village to village, there are both religious and social barriers to movement outside their own settlements. Sawatzky feels that in the future, Mennonites who remain will have to form ejidos just as other Mexicans do. Unlike Paraguay, where Mennonites have had a half century to adjust to an impoverished agricultural economy which they are bound to help improve, the Mexican situation has vastly different implications for the future of these foreign settlers.
Sawatzky has presented an intriguing analysis of a pioneer settlement situation which makes us hopeful that he will be interested enough to return to the scene 20 years hence to let us know what happened.
